Grim Reunions
by Lady Silence
Summary: Not all reunions are good ones. Moments with Buffy during the zombie apocalypse. Warning: Character deaths.


**Title:** Grim Reunions  
 **Author:** Silence  
 **Summary:** It's Buffy in the zombie apocalypse.  
 **Warnings:** Character death!  
 **Characters:** Buffy Summers, Dawn Summers, Xander Harris, T-Dog, Daryl Dixon, Rick Grimes, Lori Grimes, Michonne, Beth Greene, Hershel Greene, etc.  
 **Fandom:** Buffy the Vampire Slayer  & The Walking Dead (TV).  
 **Spoilers:** Set during season 3 of The Walking Dead and years after the Buffy series ended.  
 **Notes:** This was done a while back as part of a bunch of prompts and I never posted it.

* * *

It happened so fast that not even Buffy and her fellow slayers were able to stop it in time. They couldn't stop the dead from rising. The walking corpses were feasting on the living. The world didn't know, didn't understand, that it had been an apocalypse that they couldn't stop. The only thing Buffy could do was to kill her slayer sisters before their heightened abilities made them unstoppable monsters. In the end, it came back down to her being the only one apparently immune to the virus that all humanity now carried in them. Despite being bit more than once, the she simply never turned. Unfortunately, everyone else did and Buffy and her friends had been spending their time trying to survive until they eventually reached Atlanta. While scavenging, things went south quickly, when what they were calling a 'herd' of the undead swarmed the area. There were literally thousands of walkers all migrating in one direction, leaving Buffy trapped with her friends. She gave Dawn and Xander a grim look, one Xander scowled at.

"Don't you dare do what I think you're doing, Buff." Xander reloaded his gun even as Dawn finished stuffing a couple of cans of food into her bag. "We can hide till they pass."

"We all know that's not happening," Buffy gripped her Slayer scythe as a plan formed in her mind. "I'm going to go out there and lure as many as I can. You guys hit and run. Get out and I'll meet you at base camp."

She made a few steps toward the doors before Xander grabbed her arm. "You're going to get killed, Buffy."

"I'll be fine," Buffy insisted, wrenching her arm free. "I can't get infected."

"No, but if you get overwhelmed it's not going to matter," Dawn pointed out. She appeared thoughtful though and pulled Xander aside. "So be fast. Don't do anything stupid. I want you back in one piece."

Xander tried to protest, "Dawn-" but Dawn shoved him aside as she gave her older sister a hug.

Buffy quickly followed up by giving Xander a hug as well and he heard her say softly to him, "Take care of my sister," before she let them both go and ran out the doors, leaving Xander and Dawn to watch as she headed into the street to begin her game of cat and mouse with the herd.

With a sigh, Xander and Dawn moved quickly to take advantage of the distraction to finish gathering anything else before slipping through a back door.

* * *

A day later, Buffy was at base camp, outside of Atlanta, but Dawn and Xander were nowhere in sight. Their routine was that if they were to be separated by a herd, they met back at camp. They didn't go back to look for them right away, because they had lost far too many people that way. And so Buffy waited.

No one came.

A note at camp (telling them to stay put if they showed) and a week of searching later, Buffy knew she wasn't going to find them. If they had gone back to camp while she was looking for her, they would have been there, unless it got too heated. That was the plan. When she got back to camp the last time, it had been exactly the way she left it, other than a few small animal trails. She followed what human trails she could, but the herd kept circling and moving through the area, ruining her ability to track where Dawn and Xander might have gone. Buffy would just have to trust in them to take care of each other until she could find them.

* * *

Two months later Buffy stumbled across a group of survivors that was barely making it by. They gave her a wary eye, and her scythe a strange look, but when she saved the pregnant woman from a couple of walkers, they cautiously gave her a chance. She felt like the outsider that she was when she was with them, but after continuing to prove her worth, they slowly began to warm to her.

"You never actually told us where you're from, Buffy," The pregnant woman Lori, said as Buffy helped her get comfortable by the campfire.

Buffy half shrugged, casually glancing about, noticing eyes on her now that the question had been asked. "California. Los Angeles originally, then Sunnydale."

T-Dog handed Buffy her share of the night's meal, "Wasn't that the place that collapsed from a sinkhole?"

She nodded both as thanks and in confirmation as she speared her possum with a fork. "It was mostly evacuated by then. My friends and I were the last to get out." A few months ago, Buffy wouldn't have given her current meal a second thought, but survival in the world gone wrong put things in perspective. "I moved to Europe for a little while after that, but ended up back here for work." Work that she had failed at. Now the world was living with the consequences. This was all on her and Faith, if Faith was still out there. She hoped her slayer sister was, but these days, Buffy didn't hold out a lot hope any more.

"Not much of a homecoming," Beth said, only to get shot a parental look from her father. The familial bond that the Greene family had, hell the one the entire group had, was one Buffy missed. Maybe she was desperate or just needed to find something to hang on to. Luckily for her, because of her rescue of Lori, she was given the opening to do what she needed to do again.

She had someone to protect again.

And if trying to help a ragtag group of survivors and a woman literally carrying their hope inside her wasn't a worthy cause, Buffy didn't know what was.

* * *

The prison was both a beacon and an ill omen as far as Buffy was concerned. But they cleared it out, unfortunately they were forced to kill two of the five surviving prisoners when one, Buffy vaguely recalled the smaller guy calling him Thomas, tried to get Rick killed. Honestly, Buffy hadn't thought Rick would have the gall to kill the man, but he had. When the other man went running, rather than have Rick follow, Buffy just threw her scythe at the back of his head. He had tumbled to the floor dead, and Buffy had one thought on her mind when she pulled her weapon out of him.

She hated this new world.

Buffy hated how the longer she went on, the more she needed to worry about the living than the dead. She hated the fact that no matter where they went, safety seemed so far away. She hated that she was clinging to Lori and the baby she was carrying like a lifeline for things to come, just like everyone else. Most of all, she hated that no matter how hard she tried, she would never be able to make things right for the world or in the very least, this group she'd come to care about.

* * *

She hadn't completely given up on ever finding Dawn and Xander. When she took her turn for hunting and scavenging, she'd make sure to take the time to look for them, even if common sense told her it was useless. Buffy had to remind herself that she'd faced dark times before, but that voice in her would argue that it wasn't the same. The voice was right, but if there was one thing her friends and family had been good at, it was defying the odds.

It was a warm sticky day with dark clouds rumbling overhead. A few days ago, she, Rick, and Daryl, had gone on a rescue mission to get Glenn and Maggie from this place called Woodbury. The newest member of their camp at the prison, Michonne, had seen Daryl's older brother take them. They'd gone in, gotten them out (along with a previous group member named Andrea that Buffy instantly disliked), and Buffy had stuck around long enough to make sure they hadn't been followed. She was by far the best one equipped to cover their tracks and after what she had seen from Woodbury's treatment of Glenn and Maggie, Buffy thought that it was time to let the Slayer come out. The Governor had though he was so important. He was nothing. His cronies were nothing.

She stood there standing in the prison yard as the thunder grew louder with the oncoming storm. It was soothing in a sense. A distraction from the fact she had pretty much let herself go in Woodbury among those that had dared to hurt her charges. Either way, she had rained down her own form of justice on the human monsters. The Governor would not be leading any other people.. not unless he found a way to do so from the aquarium that his head was now the sole occupant of.

When it came to taking care of those around her, Buffy was no longer a hero. She was a killer. She knew it. She accepted it... because when she got to see Lori and Rick and everyone else have that extra time with their lives or the baby… If Maggie and Glenn got to have a night of sleep knowing that the Governor or his flunkies weren't going to hurt them… It was a good enough reward for her dying humanity.

* * *

A few weeks later, T-Dog and Buffy were on a scavenging run. They had needed some more baby clothes, formula, and other necessities. It wasn't easy at the prison, and Rick was insistent that they stayed vigilant. Ever since he and his wife had reconciled after her nearly disastrous time in labor (thank god Hershel and Carol had been there) he may not have been quite as cold, but he was just as protective. Buffy kind of admired that. But he had a family to protect. She just had a duty to protect in general. Just a sacred duty and killer instinct.

She and T-Dog were packing away the few items they'd managed to get from the small set of outlet stores they'd found off the main road when Buffy decided that she wanted to get a look at the small cabin nearby. The pair finished their work and headed for the cabin in question. While Buffy didn't feel that she needed anyone to watch her back, there was some sense of comfort that she wasn't as alone as she told herself that she was most of the time. The pair searched the first floor thoroughly, but other than a few half empty cans of rotted Spam and roaches, there was nothing to salvage. But something nagged at her and it took her a minute to realize that the place looked rather clean compared to most places they scavenged from. It was still a mess, as seen by the nasty contents of the kitchen, but there was actually some effort to keep some areas organized. Recently abandoned, Buffy mused.

They headed upstairs and again found some signs of it being lived in. Still, no actual people. T-Dog surmised that they may have left in a hurry, but it wasn't exactly their problem. He was right, but Buffy paused on their way to the stairwell when she spotted the half snapped drawstring to the attic.

"Give me a boost," Buffy commanded. T-Dog gave her a wary look but shrugged as he did as asked. With his help, Buffy was able to reach the string to pull open the attic door. The wooden stairs slid out, the bottom hitting the hallway floor with a thud. Instantly, the rancid smell of stale death spilled out of the attic. She gripped her ever present scythe as T-Dog readied his gun. Moving like a hunter on the prowl, Buffy went cautiously up the stairs, while T-Dog kept a lookout from below.

All she found was death. Several bodies littered the floor, all dead. Some with bite marks, some not, but all had a wound to the head, taking them out. As she rummaged around the attic space, she found a photograph that caught her interest. She picked it up and stared at it long and hard, and she felt the twinge of something familiar. The body closest to it finally snared her attention and she stared blankly at the thin form of what used to be a young woman. She swallowed slowly and absently reached out to the long dark hair that was stained with blood and muck. That was it then. No more 'I hate you!' or 'Get out of my room!' No more family. No more hope. Buffy quickly pushed aside the rising emotions and went back down to find T-Dog waiting patiently for her.

"Find anything?" He asked her, a curious look and concern written on his face.

She shook her head, the photograph still in one of her hands. It was almost mocking her, but she still hung on to it now. "Nothing… but there was a few empty bottles of wine up there." She faked a grim smile, though the grim was real enough, "Just think, if we could survive off glass we'd all be set. If only we didn't have that whole shredding the insides problem with it."

T-Dog didn't exactly buy what she was selling, but he snorted as they headed back down the stairs, willing to play along. She'd talk when she was ready, or she wouldn't. They all had their own demons. "If only. We ready to head back?"

She nodded and they exited the cabin. The sooner they left, the better she would feel. (Except she knew she'd never feel better.) "Yeah, I think we've done all we can he-" She was cut off by T-Dog's sudden shout as a walker came shambling from nowhere, its rotted hands grabbing for the man, its maw opening to try and get a bite. Time actually seemed to pause for her at the scene, but her instincts kicked in and soon enough the walker was on the ground. T-Dog was breathing heavy, readying his gun to finish the walker off, but Buffy beat him to the punch when she simply stabbed the fallen walker in the skull with the stake end of her scythe. "Are you alright?" Buffy asked, ignoring the schlurping sound of brain matter sliding off her scythe as she yanked it out.

T-Dog nodded. "Yeah. Caught me off guard is all. Thanks." He frowned as he watched her gaze linger on the walker. "Something wrong?"

Buffy found herself staring at the walker, an empty feeling in her chest. Next to it was the photo she had picked up, she had dropped it in the struggle, and now rotted gore was pooling around and on it. She was tempted to pick up the photo, or to close the eye on the walker to keep from looking at the cold empty stare that did not match the boy in the picture that she used to know, even though Buffy could tell they were one and the same. She couldn't think of it as a 'he'. Not anymore. Instead she simply shook her head, realizing that the part of her that should have felt something didn't. "No, nothing. Let's go."

As the pair left in their truck, the photo's three Sunnydale teenagers smiling about things to come grew ever darker as it soaked up the blood, another reminder of a reunion lost in blood and death.


End file.
